NCTE can’t wait to welcome legendary author Margaret Atwood to the 2026 Annual Convention, happening in Philadelphia November 19–22!
The prolific author will open Convention with a keynote address on Thursday, November 19, at 4:00 p.m. ET—just one of the many exciting events on the docket for this year’s Convention.
Since the 1960s, Atwood has written more than 50 books, including Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic The Handmaid’s Tale was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which became a global number-one bestseller, won the Booker Prize, and was adapted into a television series launched in April on Hulu.
Atwood has written across genres, from poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to chamber opera and graphic novels. She is also an inventor—she developed the LongPen, a remote signing device created so she could sign books remotely with an authentic signature—and was the first author tapped for the Future Library, a project based in Sweden that holds manuscripts for 100 years before publication. Her book Scribbler Moon is set to be published in 2114.
“The texts are going to slumber for 100 years and then they’ll wake up, come to life again,” Atwood told The Guardian in 2015, when the book was completed. “It’s a fairytale length of time. She slept for 100 years.”
Atwood’s many accolades include the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN America Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019, she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature.
Atwood is generously donating her time for the Annual Convention, a gift that supports both NCTE and the ELA educators that are part of our community. We are very grateful.
Don’t miss your chance to hear Atwood speak at the 2026 NCTE Annual Convention on Thursday, November 19, at 4:00 p.m. ET.